XPRIZE (www.xprize.org), the global leader in incentivized prize competitions, announced the launch of its next major competition: the $2 million Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE. The Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE aims to spur global innovators to develop accurate and affordable ocean pH sensors that will ultimately transform our understanding of ocean acidification.

NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in partnership with the Marine Research Institute in Iceland deployed the first high-latitude ocean acidification monitoring buoy in the Atlantic Ocean in early August. The moored buoy is the first of its kind to be deployed north of the Arctic circle in a region where very little is known about how carbon dioxide (CO2) is entering the ocean environment.

Goal is improved short and long-term prediction of weather, climate, ocean and sea ice conditions

Accurately predicting the weather - at short and long time scales - is among the most complex and important challenges faced by science. Protecting the nation’s security and economic well-being will increasingly rely on improved skill in forecasting weather, weather-driven events like floods and droughts, and long-term shifts in weather, ocean and sea-ice patterns.

International study combines aircraft and ground data to measure the “breath” of the Amazon forest

As climates change, the lush tropical ecosystems of the Amazon Basin may release more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they absorb, according to a new study published Feb. 6 in Nature.